France | Protesting students find a lot of support

During the nationwide day of student protests in Paris, someone holds up a sign that reads "Youth won't eat your shit." Photo: AFP/Geoffroy van der Hasselt The day of action that the protesting high school students called for on Tuesday was a great success for them - both on the streets and in public opinion. From the morning onwards, tens of thousands of students took to the streets in Nantes, Rennes, Lyon and Marseille, before the large demonstration in Paris began at Republic Square in the afternoon.

Teachers, students and parents also demonstrated alongside the high school students to express their solidarity and emphasize the demands of the young people. In total, the organizers counted 450,000 demonstrators across the country, including 100,000 in Paris alone.

The movement, which has been going on since mid-September and is still gaining strength, began with a strike by teachers at a high school in the Paris suburb of Cré, protesting against their poor working conditions. This was taken up by the students there and then at other high schools in the Paris region and supplemented with their own demands. This movement has spread like wildfire across the country.

At the top of their list of concerns is the high number of lost hours, because sick teachers are usually not replaced because the necessary staff has been rationalized away for years to save money. On average, the Ministry of Education has now had to admit, every tenth lesson and the associated knowledge is lost. In this context, it became known that the positions of 4,000 teachers were eliminated in the past twelve months and a further 1,500 are to follow in the current school year.

For a long time, the government's reaction was limited to deploying new police units to counter the protests.

It is also criticized that many schools are in great need of renovation or are even dilapidated and that, due to poor insulation, the classrooms "resemble a refrigerator in winter and a sauna on hot summer days," as one student assessed in an interview.

Since the protesting high school students were obviously initially not taken seriously by the school authorities and the government and no politician had taken their concerns into account, the reaction was to intensify the protests and even to intentionally damage or even set fire to school buildings. But this was mostly the work of out-of-school and criminal young people. Most students clearly distanced themselves from it. “Our movement has been stolen from us,” said one of them in an interview.

But politicians also tried to exploit the students' protests for their own benefit. Government representatives and spokespersons for right-wing opposition parties quickly realized that the left-wing opposition party La France insoumise (LFI) was behind the protest movement and that it was being directed by it.

A protester throws a flare amid tear gas smoke at a demonstration by students in the western French city of Rennes. Photo: AFP/Alain Jocard In fact, LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon immediately seized on the protests, took ownership of them and called on all elected LFI representatives to support the students in every way possible. This extended to the declaration by the LFI mayor of the Paris working-class suburb of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, that violence is occasionally "legitimate", even if the local politician backtracked due to the media response it triggered and specified that this did not apply to the current student protests.

For a long time, the government's reaction was limited to deploying new police units to counter the protests. However, this did not calm things down; on the contrary, it acted like a provocation. Clashes between students and police officers are inevitable and quickly escalate. This extends to the use not only of rubber batons and tear gas, but also of grenades with irritants and banging effects or rubber bullets, which are intended for use in the event that police officers are harassed by aggressive crowds and have to defend themselves.

Such weapons have often been misused and have caused serious injuries to numerous students. One even lost an eye, another a hand. As of Tuesday, 215 students and 85 teachers were injured.

The public is outraged by the fact that Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez expressly approves of the harsh measures taken by law enforcement, is unwilling to classify it as "inappropriate" and publicly refuses to warn the police and gendarmerie under his command to "moderate."

In order to let the wave of protests subside, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has now called on the Minister of Education Édouard Geffray to finally start talks with the protesting students' organizations and to meet them with concrete measures.

The head of government must fear that the student protests will reinforce the social demands of the trade unions and thus largely determine the mood in the country in the six months until the presidential election; That's why he announced emergency measures in a communiqué last week. This includes more substitute teachers, a program and funds for the renovation of schools, a better organized school day and that in the future the student representatives will be systematically consulted and included in decisions. These announcements had no effect. They're probably way too late.

A demonstrator throws a traffic cone at a member of the French Republican Security Corps (CRS - Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité) during a demonstration by high school students in Paris. Photo: AFP/Kenzo Tribouillard We did the math This item didn't cost you anything. Us: research, production and technology. We saved on office rent as well as printing and distribution. And we gave up salary. Nevertheless, the calculation doesn't work without you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year. You pay what you can, in return we keep writing.

No paywall, no small print, just one goal: that nd stays.